In taking over Rangers, Bill Miller faces one of his biggest challenges since he was a codebreaker during the Vietnam War.

The truck tycoon was recruited into military intelligence after a stint at a US Army language school in Monterey, California, in the 1960s.

Mr Miller, 65, went on to form Tennessee-based Miller Industries and is now one of the leaders in the lucrative tow-truck industry. His reputation as a business turnaround specialist provides the key to the future of the football club.

The Detroit-born businessman followed his father into one of the city's car manufacturing plants and later, armed with a degree in engineering and an MBA, went on to work for a variety of large companies. In each case, he found work fixing broken units within the companies and, in the course of this, caught the entrepreneurial bug himself.

First he bought Holmes, a bankrupt company that had once held a 75% share of the tow-truck industry in the United States, then he purchased Challenger and Century. The three companies cost a total of $25m, of which he borrowed $20m, and together they became part of the newly formed Miller Industries Group.

Some 32 years later Miller Industries is a global enterprise that employs hundreds and has a turnover of £253 million. His firm made $109.4 million (£68.9m) in sales in the last three months of 2011 alone – up by one-third on the previous quarter – and registered a gross profit of $16.3m (£10.2m).

Mr Miller was also chief executive of Team Sports Entertainment, which was behind an ill-fated attempt to start a rival series to the hugely successful NASCAR motor racing series. It resulted in a legal settlement for four shareholders.